The History of the Alpaca and the North American Alpaca Industry

Photobucket

Alpaca Averages

The alpaca is a single-coated fiber animal, typically weighing between 120 and 175 pounds as an adult. The average alpaca stands about 32 to 39 inches high at the withers (front shoulders) and usually cannot quite look an average adult in the eye.

The alpaca is considered a quasi-ruminant, as it has a compartmentalized stomach rather than several separate stomachs like those found in cattle and other true ruminants. Alpacas primary feed is pasture grass and hay. An alpaca has a single row of lower teeth, with a hard palette on the roof of its mouth. They tend to break grasses off, partially chew the material, swallow a mouthful, and then bring a “cud” of grass back up to re-chew a little later. Alpacas are very efficient at processing nutrients from their feed, typically eating about one “flake” of a bale of grass hay per day or approximately two to three pounds of pasture forage each day.

A pregnant alpaca has a gestation period of a little over 11 months, and is often bred back within 2-3 weeks after birthing. A newborn alpaca, called a “cria,” usually weighs 12-19 pounds at birth. A newborn cria is usually up on its feet within ½ hour of its birth, and is often seen running wobbly laps in the pasture on the second day. The normal cria will gain at least ¼ to ½ pound a day in its early days and is typically weaned from its mother at about 5-7 months of age.

The females are capable of becoming pregnant at approximately one year of age, although earlier pregnancies have been noted. Most breeders will wait until the animal is more fully developed, generally after the female is 1½ years old or at least 90-100 pounds. Although there are documented instances of potent 9 month-old boys, the males generally become sexually mature between the ages of 2 and 3.

Alpacas are shorn once a year, usually in the late Spring and before the summer heat arrives. The alpaca will produce an annual fleece with a staple length varying as much as 2 to 6 inches, with an annual fleece weight of 4 to 12 pounds. The fleece includes the “prime or blanket” fleece, consisting of the more uniform fine fibers taken from the animal’s back and sides, and the “seconds” (the leg, belly and neck fiber together with any short cuts from the prime fleece).

Types of Alpacas

There are two basic types of alpacas — the huacaya and the suri alpaca. The huacaya alpaca is by far the more common, representing approximately 90 percent of the Peruvian herds and probably even more of the North American herd. Huacaya fiber grows straight out from the alpaca’s body, with fiber that is characterized by crimp and loft. In contrast, the suri alpaca has fiber that hangs from its body in pencil-sized ringlets. Although lacking in the crimp of the huacaya fiber, suri fiber’s smoother fiber shaft gives the fiber a more lustrous look and a smoother handle.

Recent research indicates that, even though the suri’s fiber structure tends to make the animal look more fragile and slight, the two types have the same essential body structure. The breeding of two huacayas invariably produces a huacaya alpaca. However, the breeding of two suri alpacas will occasionally produce an apparent huacaya type — in some populations of animals as often as once out of every four births although less for other populations. The cross of a huacaya and a suri likewise produces unpredictable results, including off-spring with a mixture of the two fiber types.

In addition, there are minor differences in “types” of huacaya alpacas, typically referred to as a “Peruvian,” on the one hand, and a “Chilean” look. These differences are probably best thought of as merely stereotypical differences between two populations of animals, each of which actually demonstrate a fairly wide range of individual traits. Nonetheless, it is generally accurate to say that a percentage of the Peruvian huacayas tend to have somewhat denser fiber coverage and/or finer fiber, and that Chilean huacayas have a much broader range of genetically based fiber colors. However, as breeders become more sophisticated and experienced, and as selective breeding continues to improve the Chileans’ fiber and add color into the Peruvian population, it is wiser to simply judge each animal on its own individual merit and pedigree according to a prospective breeder’s personal tastes.

The Origins of the Alpaca

The alpaca is a member of the camelid family, which includes the African Dromedary camel (the one hump camel), the Asian Bactrian camel (the two hump camel), as well as the alpaca’s closer South American relatives — the llama, the vicuna and the guanaco.

The ancestor of the camelid family actually originated in the North American Southwest approximately 50 million years ago and then migrated from North America to South America, Asia and Northern Africa. These camelid forefathers then became extinct in North America.

The Incas and the Alpaca

There is no such thing as “wild” alpacas — they are a domesticated animal that is the product of years of selective breeding, much like the poodle or the beagle. Archeological digs indicate that the domestication of the wild South American camelids that eventually became the domestic llama and alpaca began approximately 7,000 years ago by the ancestors of the Incan people.

In the Incan culture, alpacas and llamas were a treasured commodity, utilized for garments, hides, fertilizer, fuel, and meat. In addition, the Incas, an incredibly advanced civilization that sprung up in the rugged Andes Mountains, never developed the wheel, but still maintained close communications and extensive commerce throughout an empire that stretched for thousands of miles over well-built roads using runners and the trusty pack llama.

Meanwhile, the fiber from the Inca’s alpaca became the clothing for the elite class, and woe to the common person with the audacity to be caught wearing alpaca. Interestingly, mummified remains of alpacas, discovered by archeologists at ritual Incan burial sites, have fiber that is finer and much more consistent than almost any alpaca alive today. Presumably, the quality of the animal was significantly impacted by unsupervised breeding and llama crossbreedings in the generations following the purposeful dismantling of the Incan culture by the Spanish conquistadors beginning in the mid-1500’s.

Today, there are approximately four million alpacas in Peru, with much lower numbers in Bolivia, Chile and other parts of South America. The Peruvian alpaca industry includes a relative handful of large landowners with sophisticated breeding programs and large numbers of animals being raised by the campesinos (the rural highland peasants). Much of Peru’s alpaca fiber is purchased by several large fiber collectives and then marketed to the European fashion houses and to Japan.

Comparison of Alpacas and Their Relatives

Many fiber animals, including cashmere goats, llamas, vicunas and guanacos, are “double coated” animals. That is, in addition to their highly prized soft undercoat of fiber, these animals also have longer, coarser guard hair. In the wild, these guard hairs provide significant additional protection against abrasions, rain and cold. But in luxurious textiles, the prickly guard hairs, if not removed either by hand or by machine, produce a much coarser, scratchy product. In contrast to other animals, the modern alpaca is a predominately “single-coated” animal, with only somewhere between 3 to 15 percent of guard hair in the prime fleece of the better animals.

The wild vicuna, with its graceful and slender build and its distinctive white “tuxedo” front of long, wispy fiber, is the smallest of the four South American camelids, weighing approximately 77 to 110 pounds. The vicuna also has the finest undercoat of any member of the camelid family, with fiber that generally ranges between 12 and 15 microns in diameter. However, that fineness is counterbalanced by the fiber’s extreme sparseness. Vicunas have an annual staple growth of less than one inch, producing only a single pound of fiber in the rural campesinos’ chacos (periodic vicuna roundups), which are held only every two to four years.

The guanaco is only slightly smaller than the South American llama. Guanacos tend to have the same general color — an orange-brown color with a whitish belly. They are an adaptable animal and inhabited a large range of climates and areas in pre-Conquest South America. They were the prime source of meat for many early Andean cultures.

The llama is the best known relative of the alpaca. It is a much larger animal, standing six foot tall or more, and bred to carry heavy loads with sure-footed care. While the llama, as found in South America, comes in a large variety of sizes in various regions, it appears to be somewhat smaller than the North American llama, which has been present in North America for substantially longer than has the alpaca. One South American authority reports the average size of the South American llama as being between 187 and 253 pounds. However, it is not uncommon for a good sized “pack” llama in North America to weigh in excess of 400 pounds. At the same time, North American breeders are increasingly breeding llamas for better and finer fiber — a breeding goal that should tend to also produce a somewhat smaller llama. In addition to a significant difference in size and a larger abundance of guard hair, the llama has the larger, distinctive “banana-shaped” ears and a rear end profile that is more square than that of the alpaca.

Llamas and alpacas, along with their wild camelid relatives — the guanaco and the vicuna — are considered by some authorities to be the same biological species. Thus, they are so closely related that they can interbred and can produce reproductively sound off-spring. (Unlike other closely related animals like the horse and the donkey which, when bred together, produce a sterile off-spring, the mule.) [Interestingly, a news article last year reported that breeders in the Middle East had successfully crossed a camel with a llama, resulting in the birth of a male "cama." It will be fascinating to see exactly what features of his parents this animal inherits and to find out whether he will be capable of reproduction.]

Although the issue has not yet been settled conclusively, the anthropological evidence and genetic research currently tends to indicate that the alpaca is the result of centuries of selective breeding of vicuna stock, while the llama is the descendant of the larger guanaco. Nonetheless, analysis of alpaca blood and DNA samples also evidences distinctive guanaco genetic material as well, possibly a result of interbreeding after the two basic breeds were developed, which would most likely have occurred after the Spanish conquest of the Incan empire and during the subsequent deterioration of the formerly tightly-structured Incan breeding program.

South American Exports of Alpacas

Initially, the Spanish conquistadors attempted unsuccessfully to transplant the alpaca into Spain in the early 1700’s. In addition, there have been many other minor attempts, with varying degrees of failure, to establish herds of alpacas in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Today, the most sizable populations of alpacas outside of South America are in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, all of which were established in only the last decade or so.

One of the more interesting early failures was the first importation of alpacas into Australia in the mid-1850’s through the extraordinary efforts of a young British entrepreneur who attempted to smuggle hundreds of alpacas and llamas out of Peru, which had banned any export of its national treasures. The five year trip across the Andes Mountains traversed Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, culminating in an 87 day sea voyage, only to find upon arrival in Australia that a newly installed Governor now favored the development of a merino sheep industry instead. This initial import eventually died out, with no significant additional effort to establish an alpaca industry until 1988, when six alpacas were imported from Alaska and Ohio. Australia, which has a strong tradition of wool production and textile processing, now has an alpaca population in excess of 20,000 animals.

Although llamas have been in North America since the late 1800’s, outside of sporadic importations of zoo specimens, there were few significant importations of alpacas into North America until 1984. Even by 1988, the number of alpacas in the United States, imported primarily from Chile and England, numbered only about six hundred animals. Since that time, the North American herd has grown both by natural reproduction and through a series of large (400 plus) and small (12-20) imports primarily from Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Australia and New Zealand. As of October 1999, the North American herd in the United States numbered approximately 24,000 registered animals.

From 1995 through the end of 1998, imports of alpacas into North America has been somewhat restrained by several factors — (1) export restrictions imposed by the Peruvian government in an attempt to avoid losing the country’s best genetic material; (2) the huge financial risks to the importer should any disease be discovered in the course of several month’s of importation quarantine; (3) increasingly rigorous screening inspections imposed by the Alpaca Registry and the Canadian registry as a condition for registration of non-pedigreed stock, which screens out alpacas of lesser quality; and (4) in the United States, a continuing legal requirement that animals from countries like Peru and Bolivia where foot and mouth disease is still considered prevalent can only be imported through the USDA’s “high quarantine” facility in Key West, Florida.

As of 1999, several factors have effectively foreclosed any additional imports of alpacas into the United States for the foreseeable future: (1) the USDA’s announcement that it was closing its Key West quarantine facility has cut off the import route for Peruvian and Bolivian animals, and (2) effective January 1999, the Alpaca Registry has discontinued its practice of screening non-pedigreed animals for inclusion into the registry, closing the registry to any animal that is not the proven off-spring of two registered parents. As a result, even if an alpaca is imported into the United States, it cannot be registered. The opinion of most breeders is that this reduction of importations should keep supply and demand for the alpaca in the United States in balance for years to come and also allow North American breeders to concentrate their breeding efforts on developing alpacas with outstanding pedigrees that will compare with and exceed any other group of animals throughout the world .

Suggested Reading and Resource Credits

“Return of the Camel: A Brief Alpaca History,” Ken Madl, Alpacas Magazine, Summer 1997.
Oral Presentation by Dr. Jane Wheeler at the AOBA/ARI Mid-Winter Conference in Reno, Nevada, February 1998.
“Animal Breeding and Production of American Camelids,” Rigoberto Calle Escobar (1984).
“Gold of the Andes: The Llama, Alpaca, Vicuna and Guanaco of South America,” Ochoa, MacQuarrie and Portus (1994).
“Peru,” Rachowiecki, The Lonely Planet Publications (1996).
Acknowledgement – Written by David Schieferstein, The Fireweed Ranch, Ltd., 1702 Dutch Creek Road, Banner Elk, NC 28604.

Copyright 1999 – All “ABC” Alpaca Buyers’ Clinic materials are protected by federal copyrights held by The Fireweed Ranch, Ltd. Any reproduction or commercial use of these materials beyond the limited use license issued to the purchaser of the “ABC” Alpaca Buyers’ Clinic Kit, without the express written permission of the Ranch and/or the author, is strictly prohibited by federal copyright law.


MENU Pages Home About Alpacas History Farm for Sale Alpacas For Sale Herdsires Breed Contract About Us Southern Bent Vacation Rental Newsletter Fireweed Ads Farm Store Video Links Associations Resources Contact Us Events Admin Login	The History of the Alpaca and the North American Alpaca Industry Alpaca Averages The alpaca is a single-coated fiber animal, typically weighing between 120 and 175 pounds as an adult. The average alpaca stands about 32 to 39 inches high at the withers (front shoulders) and usually cannot quite look an average adult in the eye. The alpaca is considered a quasi-ruminant, as it has a compartmentalized stomach rather than several separate stomachs like those found in cattle and other true ruminants. Alpacas primary feed is pasture grass and hay. An alpaca has a single row of lower teeth, with a hard palette on the roof of its mouth. They tend to break grasses off, partially chew the material, swallow a mouthful, and then bring a “cud” of grass back up to re-chew a little later. Alpacas are very efficient at processing nutrients from their feed, typically eating about one “flake” of a bale of grass hay per day or approximately two to three pounds of pasture forage each day. A pregnant alpaca has a gestation period of a little over 11 months, and is often bred back within 2-3 weeks after birthing. A newborn alpaca, called a “cria,” usually weighs 12-19 pounds at birth. A newborn cria is usually up on its feet within ½ hour of its birth, and is often seen running wobbly laps in the pasture on the second day. The normal cria will gain at least ¼ to ½ pound a day in its early days and is typically weaned from its mother at about 5-7 months of age. The females are capable of becoming pregnant at approximately one year of age, although earlier pregnancies have been noted. Most breeders will wait until the animal is more fully developed, generally after the female is 1½ years old or at least 90-100 pounds. Although there are documented instances of potent 9 month-old boys, the males generally become sexually mature between the ages of 2 and 3. Alpacas are shorn once a year, usually in the late Spring and before the summer heat arrives. The alpaca will produce an annual fleece with a staple length varying as much as 2 to 6 inches, with an annual fleece weight of 4 to 12 pounds. The fleece includes the “prime or blanket” fleece, consisting of the more uniform fine fibers taken from the animal’s back and sides, and the “seconds” (the leg, belly and neck fiber together with any short cuts from the prime fleece). Types of Alpacas There are two basic types of alpacas — the huacaya and the suri alpaca. The huacaya alpaca is by far the more common, representing approximately 90 percent of the Peruvian herds and probably even more of the North American herd. Huacaya fiber grows straight out from the alpaca’s body, with fiber that is characterized by crimp and loft. In contrast, the suri alpaca has fiber that hangs from its body in pencil-sized ringlets. Although lacking in the crimp of the huacaya fiber, suri fiber’s smoother fiber shaft gives the fiber a more lustrous look and a smoother handle. Recent research indicates that, even though the suri’s fiber structure tends to make the animal look more fragile and slight, the two types have the same essential body structure. The breeding of two huacayas invariably produces a huacaya alpaca. However, the breeding of two suri alpacas will occasionally produce an apparent huacaya type — in some populations of animals as often as once out of every four births although less for other populations. The cross of a huacaya and a suri likewise produces unpredictable results, including off-spring with a mixture of the two fiber types. In addition, there are minor differences in “types” of huacaya alpacas, typically referred to as a “Peruvian,” on the one hand, and a “Chilean” look. These differences are probably best thought of as merely stereotypical differences between two populations of animals, each of which actually demonstrate a fairly wide range of individual traits. Nonetheless, it is generally accurate to say that a percentage of the Peruvian huacayas tend to have somewhat denser fiber coverage and/or finer fiber, and that Chilean huacayas have a much broader range of genetically based fiber colors. However, as breeders become more sophisticated and experienced, and as selective breeding continues to improve the Chileans’ fiber and add color into the Peruvian population, it is wiser to simply judge each animal on its own individual merit and pedigree according to a prospective breeder’s personal tastes. The Origins of the Alpaca The alpaca is a member of the camelid family, which includes the African Dromedary camel (the one hump camel), the Asian Bactrian camel (the two hump camel), as well as the alpaca’s closer South American relatives — the llama, the vicuna and the guanaco. The ancestor of the camelid family actually originated in the North American Southwest approximately 50 million years ago and then migrated from North America to South America, Asia and Northern Africa. These camelid forefathers then became extinct in North America. The Incas and the Alpaca There is no such thing as “wild” alpacas — they are a domesticated animal that is the product of years of selective breeding, much like the poodle or the beagle. Archeological digs indicate that the domestication of the wild South American camelids that eventually became the domestic llama and alpaca began approximately 7,000 years ago by the ancestors of the Incan people. In the Incan culture, alpacas and llamas were a treasured commodity, utilized for garments, hides, fertilizer, fuel, and meat. In addition, the Incas, an incredibly advanced civilization that sprung up in the rugged Andes Mountains, never developed the wheel, but still maintained close communications and extensive commerce throughout an empire that stretched for thousands of miles over well-built roads using runners and the trusty pack llama. Meanwhile, the fiber from the Inca’s alpaca became the clothing for the elite class, and woe to the common person with the audacity to be caught wearing alpaca. Interestingly, mummified remains of alpacas, discovered by archeologists at ritual Incan burial sites, have fiber that is finer and much more consistent than almost any alpaca alive today. Presumably, the quality of the animal was significantly impacted by unsupervised breeding and llama crossbreedings in the generations following the purposeful dismantling of the Incan culture by the Spanish conquistadors beginning in the mid-1500’s. Today, there are approximately four million alpacas in Peru, with much lower numbers in Bolivia, Chile and other parts of South America. The Peruvian alpaca industry includes a relative handful of large landowners with sophisticated breeding programs and large numbers of animals being raised by the campesinos (the rural highland peasants). Much of Peru’s alpaca fiber is purchased by several large fiber collectives and then marketed to the European fashion houses and to Japan. Comparison of Alpacas and Their Relatives Many fiber animals, including cashmere goats, llamas, vicunas and guanacos, are “double coated” animals. That is, in addition to their highly prized soft undercoat of fiber, these animals also have longer, coarser guard hair. In the wild, these guard hairs provide significant additional protection against abrasions, rain and cold. But in luxurious textiles, the prickly guard hairs, if not removed either by hand or by machine, produce a much coarser, scratchy product. In contrast to other animals, the modern alpaca is a predominately “single-coated” animal, with only somewhere between 3 to 15 percent of guard hair in the prime fleece of the better animals. The wild vicuna, with its graceful and slender build and its distinctive white “tuxedo” front of long, wispy fiber, is the smallest of the four South American camelids, weighing approximately 77 to 110 pounds. The vicuna also has the finest undercoat of any member of the camelid family, with fiber that generally ranges between 12 and 15 microns in diameter. However, that fineness is counterbalanced by the fiber’s extreme sparseness. Vicunas have an annual staple growth of less than one inch, producing only a single pound of fiber in the rural campesinos’ chacos (periodic vicuna roundups), which are held only every two to four years. The guanaco is only slightly smaller than the South American llama. Guanacos tend to have the same general color — an orange-brown color with a whitish belly. They are an adaptable animal and inhabited a large range of climates and areas in pre-Conquest South America. They were the prime source of meat for many early Andean cultures. The llama is the best known relative of the alpaca. It is a much larger animal, standing six foot tall or more, and bred to carry heavy loads with sure-footed care. While the llama, as found in South America, comes in a large variety of sizes in various regions, it appears to be somewhat smaller than the North American llama, which has been present in North America for substantially longer than has the alpaca. One South American authority reports the average size of the South American llama as being between 187 and 253 pounds. However, it is not uncommon for a good sized “pack” llama in North America to weigh in excess of 400 pounds. At the same time, North American breeders are increasingly breeding llamas for better and finer fiber — a breeding goal that should tend to also produce a somewhat smaller llama. In addition to a significant difference in size and a larger abundance of guard hair, the llama has the larger, distinctive “banana-shaped” ears and a rear end profile that is more square than that of the alpaca. Llamas and alpacas, along with their wild camelid relatives — the guanaco and the vicuna — are considered by some authorities to be the same biological species. Thus, they are so closely related that they can interbred and can produce reproductively sound off-spring. (Unlike other closely related animals like the horse and the donkey which, when bred together, produce a sterile off-spring, the mule.) [Interestingly, a news article last year reported that breeders in the Middle East had successfully crossed a camel with a llama, resulting in the birth of a male "cama." It will be fascinating to see exactly what features of his parents this animal inherits and to find out whether he will be capable of reproduction.] Although the issue has not yet been settled conclusively, the anthropological evidence and genetic research currently tends to indicate that the alpaca is the result of centuries of selective breeding of vicuna stock, while the llama is the descendant of the larger guanaco. Nonetheless, analysis of alpaca blood and DNA samples also evidences distinctive guanaco genetic material as well, possibly a result of interbreeding after the two basic breeds were developed, which would most likely have occurred after the Spanish conquest of the Incan empire and during the subsequent deterioration of the formerly tightly-structured Incan breeding program. South American Exports of Alpacas Initially, the Spanish conquistadors attempted unsuccessfully to transplant the alpaca into Spain in the early 1700’s. In addition, there have been many other minor attempts, with varying degrees of failure, to establish herds of alpacas in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Today, the most sizable populations of alpacas outside of South America are in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, all of which were established in only the last decade or so. One of the more interesting early failures was the first importation of alpacas into Australia in the mid-1850’s through the extraordinary efforts of a young British entrepreneur who attempted to smuggle hundreds of alpacas and llamas out of Peru, which had banned any export of its national treasures. The five year trip across the Andes Mountains traversed Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, culminating in an 87 day sea voyage, only to find upon arrival in Australia that a newly installed Governor now favored the development of a merino sheep industry instead. This initial import eventually died out, with no significant additional effort to establish an alpaca industry until 1988, when six alpacas were imported from Alaska and Ohio. Australia, which has a strong tradition of wool production and textile processing, now has an alpaca population in excess of 20,000 animals. Although llamas have been in North America since the late 1800’s, outside of sporadic importations of zoo specimens, there were few significant importations of alpacas into North America until 1984. Even by 1988, the number of alpacas in the United States, imported primarily from Chile and England, numbered only about six hundred animals. Since that time, the North American herd has grown both by natural reproduction and through a series of large (400 plus) and small (12-20) imports primarily from Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Australia and New Zealand. As of October 1999, the North American herd in the United States numbered approximately 24,000 registered animals. From 1995 through the end of 1998, imports of alpacas into North America has been somewhat restrained by several factors — (1) export restrictions imposed by the Peruvian government in an attempt to avoid losing the country’s best genetic material; (2) the huge financial risks to the importer should any disease be discovered in the course of several month’s of importation quarantine; (3) increasingly rigorous screening inspections imposed by the Alpaca Registry and the Canadian registry as a condition for registration of non-pedigreed stock, which screens out alpacas of lesser quality; and (4) in the United States, a continuing legal requirement that animals from countries like Peru and Bolivia where foot and mouth disease is still considered prevalent can only be imported through the USDA’s “high quarantine” facility in Key West, Florida. As of 1999, several factors have effectively foreclosed any additional imports of alpacas into the United States for the foreseeable future: (1) the USDA’s announcement that it was closing its Key West quarantine facility has cut off the import route for Peruvian and Bolivian animals, and (2) effective January 1999, the Alpaca Registry has discontinued its practice of screening non-pedigreed animals for inclusion into the registry, closing the registry to any animal that is not the proven off-spring of two registered parents. As a result, even if an alpaca is imported into the United States, it cannot be registered. The opinion of most breeders is that this reduction of importations should keep supply and demand for the alpaca in the United States in balance for years to come and also allow North American breeders to concentrate their breeding efforts on developing alpacas with outstanding pedigrees that will compare with and exceed any other group of animals throughout the world . Suggested Reading and Resource Credits “Return of the Camel: A Brief Alpaca History,” Ken Madl, Alpacas Magazine, Summer 1997. Oral Presentation by Dr. Jane Wheeler at the AOBA/ARI Mid-Winter Conference in Reno, Nevada, February 1998. “Animal Breeding and Production of American Camelids,” Rigoberto Calle Escobar (1984). “Gold of the Andes: The Llama, Alpaca, Vicuna and Guanaco of South America,” Ochoa, MacQuarrie and Portus (1994). “Peru,” Rachowiecki, The Lonely Planet Publications (1996). Acknowledgement – Written by David Schieferstein, The Fireweed Ranch, Ltd., 1702 Dutch Creek Road, Banner Elk, NC 28604. Copyright 1999 – All “ABC” Alpaca Buyers’ Clinic materials are protected by federal copyrights held by The Fireweed Ranch, Ltd. Any reproduction or commercial use of these materials beyond the limited use license issued to the purchaser of the “ABC” Alpaca Buyers’ Clinic Kit, without the express written permission of the Ranch and/or the author, is strictly prohibited by federal copyright law.
Copyright © Fireweed Alpacas \| Website Configured by Mountain Ash